PHILLIP TAVARES: Molly isn't what you think it is

Saturday

Oct 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 12, 2013 at 12:08 PM

The news has been flooded lately with stories about the drug “molly.” Most reports describe it as the latest term for the popular club drug known as ecstasy. But what police departments across the South Shore have discovered is that while molly may have some components of ecstasy, it’s also become the catch-all term for a combination of many dangerous chemicals that provide a “Russian roulette” experience for users.

Phillip A. Tavares

The news media have been flooded lately with stories about the drug “molly.” It’s been reported that recently people using it have exhibited violent behavior, experienced hallucinations, overdosed, and in several tragic cases, have even died.

Most reports have stated that “molly” is the latest term for the popular club drug known as ecstasy. No more. What police departments across the South Shore have discovered is that while molly may have some components of ecstasy, it’s also become the catch-all term for a combination of many dangerous chemicals. These chemicals provide a “Russian roulette” experience for users, as they are literally getting a different product each time.

In years past and as recently as a few months ago, ecstasy – or MDMA – was widely known as the club “love drug” because it lowered people’s inhibitions toward sex and risk-taking, and gave them the sense of feeling pleasantly – if dangerously – high. Many stories emerged about ecstasy and its association with all night, techno dance parties. During ecstasy’s height of popularity many movies portrayed these all night “raves,” and the drug became synonymous with techno music and neon colored bracelets and necklaces and glorified it as a safe, fun drug. The scenes that were left on the cutting room floor were those instances when ecstasy was responsible for many overdoses and deaths. Those tragedies as a direct result of ecstasy use never seemed to attract the attention the use of molly has now.

The reason is simple, molly is not ecstasy. Molly is more potent, more dangerous, and has been clearly documented to be more deadly. Many South Shore police departments have recently made seizures of molly and have discovered that it tested chemically as methylone, as have the majority of molly busts in another state.

What is methylone? Simply put, it’s bath salts. Bath salts are perhaps most famously associated with the Florida incident where a man chewed off the face of a homeless man while allegedly high on bath salts – a poison that will cook your body from the inside out.

Molly has traditionally been synonymous with MDMA. Powdered ecstasy was called “molly” on the street and the crystal form was thought to be pure MDMA. This association between Molly and MDMA changed in 2013.

The rise of bath salts being sold as molly – and the associated increase in overdoses – is the result of the crackdown and banning of bath salts by Pres. Barack Obama in July 2012. This resulted in warehouses full of bath salts that could no longer be sold. Drug dealers got creative and began selling it illegally as molly.

We have seen locally that dealers and users don’t know how to dose it, and this is contributing to the recently reported overdoses and deaths. What this means is when a user buys molly now, they are not getting the same drug that was sold to them as molly last year. Consider that students in college were using molly at the end of spring semester with far fewer tragic outcomes. Those same students partying over the summer and returning to school this fall used molly completely unaware that this year’s club drug is really the zombie drug known as bath salts.

There is a misconception that people are overdosing because this form of Molly is really pure MDMA. The truth of the matter is that people are overdosing because unbeknownst to them, they are taking bath salts. Users inject it, snort it, smoke it, and swallow it. Sometimes with dire consequences.

Molly has changed dramatically, both in what it actually is, and in the way it reacts with your body. It’s no longer ecstasy, it’s not something that should be associated with all night raves, but a killer.

While we probably don’t have the power to change molly’s name from something cute and safe sounding, like the girl next door, we do have the power to spread the word about its deadly consequences.

It’s time people spread that word that molly isn’t a “happy drug” as some Hollywood stars will have you believe. Molly is not what you think it is, and it’s definitely not your friend.